GC.com seems very slow (again)

[+Al 7365]

Geocaching.com seems slower than I have every seen it today. Anyone else agree? It must be everyone checking out the new challenges.

[+AmphibianTrackers]

Yep. Extremely.

[+alflavor]

Same here, in UK - almost unusable, for past 2-3 hours now. Trying to log my 20 finds from Saturday, proving very hard!

[+Al 7365]

Yep. Extremely.

Looking at feedback it is because of challenges.

[+geggis]

Yep. Extremely.

 

Same here in Austria !!

[+Yosemite1]

Yep. Extremely.

 

Same here in Austria !!

I've been trying to connect to geocaching.com for 5 minutes, can't connect.

[+WiredUK]

Typical, the first day I set aside to go and bag a few (I'm a noobie) and it's not working

 

Does this happen a lot?

[+alflavor]

Typical, the first day I set aside to go and bag a few (I'm a noobie) and it's not working

 

Does this happen a lot?

 

Very rarely in my experience, I guess it's just more annoying as it's a Sunday. Glad I have a local PQ loaded in my GPS otherwise I'd be here all day.

[+ju_wi]

Same in Germany ...

 

Not really astonishing - when with every listing, that is downloaded, up to thousands of useless (!) user icon images are now sent over... Even when the site is quicker, this is a mess being outdoor...

[Sharpeset]

Not as fast as 'very slow', more like stationary...

[+baack40]

Yes same here veryyyy slow. Can't even get on. Once it said Server too busy.

 

As far as the challenges are concerned, most of them are ridiculous and have nothing to do with geocaching. Hope they reconsider the guidelines for this area. A lot of them you can do from your home and I sure don't think that is what geocaching was to be about. What were they thinking?

[+MeerRescue]

....way to go Groundspeak, nice to see your spending our membership money wisely

[+agentmancuso]

...

 

As far as the challenges are concerned, most of them are ridiculous and have nothing to do with geocaching. Hope they reconsider the guidelines for this area. A lot of them you can do from your home and I sure don't think that is what geocaching was to be about. What were they thinking?

 

What they were thinking was:

We have a virtual monopoly on cache listing sites. Geocachers will probably hate Challenges, because they have nothing to do with geocaching. But most of them will be too lazy to find an alternative cache listing site, and will continue to pay us money anyway. But even if they don't, we don't really care, because there's a lot more money to be made from getting numpties with smartphones to post pictures of themselves doing stupid things than there is in real geocaching.

[+Greyvin]

Slow here in the US. It is taking minutes to load each page...and trying to use the map...yeah, right. Someone at Groundspeak needs to try an iisreset...perhaps that will work. I am trying to plan a caching outing for my family today and it is going to take me all day to plan at this rate. Normally this would be quick to find an are via the map, create a pocket query and plan a quick route. Now, our plans to go caching are ruined (unless this is fixed soon).

[+milvus-milvus]

This is a joke - can we just revert to where we were before the recent changes?

[+AKiteFlier]

This is a joke - can we just revert to where we were before the recent changes?

 

AMEN to that - my pet snail moves faster. In 15 min I was able to log one find and one TB. I hate all the extra icons - I really don't care what a fellow geocacher's icon looks like - I liked the old, compact log page. I'm not sure what feedback they were operating on to make THESE design changes. Phooey and baloney.

 

Don't even get me started on challenges...

[jri]

Just a guess, but the slowness could be something to do with the fact that every time you look at a cache page, geocaching.com now has to serve up five extra avatar images and look up five sets of challenge stats, in addition to everything it used to do. It would be nice if they could actually be bothered to write the pages in valid HTML too, which might help them render a little quicker...

[+Simply Paul]

After some hours of trying to load the front page, it seems back. Woop.

[jadenrich2101]

Uber slow for me all day!!! Cant be overloading with ppl and challenges.......anyone know how or can find out how many more people have signed up since the challenges have started???

[+GAZ]

I have no reason to complain at the s l o w n e s s of the site, coz I don't pay, thank goodness. I just do other things til it's sorted.

 

I remember in the "good 'ole days" that I would've been quite annoyed that I couldn't get on and log my finds, as I was VERY keen then, but there again, there were only 20 odd thousand players worldwide, and only caches in the UK adding up to hundreds, not gazillions, so I know how frustrating it can be.

 

As for challenges.......jeez, I couldn't be a***d! :laughing:

[+nightsurfer]

Just a guess, but the slowness could be something to do with the fact that every time you look at a cache page, geocaching.com now has to serve up five extra avatar images and look up five sets of challenge stats, in addition to everything it used to do. It would be nice if they could actually be bothered to write the pages in valid HTML too, which might help them render a little quicker...

 

It is a shame that there is not an option to turn off all the clutter and have the old page style, I certainly don't care what avatar someone is using, nor am I that interested in the challenges, to be honest, the old virtual cache would get my vote.

[+Jonovich]

Just got into my profile at long last and selected "Quick View".....

 

...it wasn't

 

Jon.

[+fluoro]

Just got into my profile at long last and selected "Quick View".....

 

...it wasn't

 

Jon.

 

I want to use the map but that's a foolish wish right now.

[+sTeamTraen]

....way to go Groundspeak, nice to see your spending our membership money wisely

Where did anyone ever get the idea that Groundspeak was some kind of mutual organisation, like the local pub's darts team or the government? (I wonder how many people walk past their local Tesco and think "huh, they're expanding the car park, what a waste of the hard-earned cash I spent on milk and bread here last week" ?)

 

Groundspeak is a business. Premium Members pay them for extra services to facilitiate playing a game. For 6p a day, PMs get access to more services than people who don't pay 6p a day. Sometimes those services are unavailable, because it turns out that this Internet stuff is actually quite hard to run 24/7/365 with several million users. (I have a Web site with 700 users and my downtime due to general screw-ups is about 10 times Groundspeak's.) Today, the site services are not very accessible, for the first time in the last 18 months (this kind of slowness on Sundays was much more common a couple of years ago). So, Premium Members have missed out on 6p's worth of value. There are many ways one could deal with a loss of that magnitude. Most of us understand that "stuff happens", and when our stake is 6p, we're prepared to accept that "hit". If 6p was extremely important to me - and there are plenty of people in the UK for whom 6p is worth hanging on to - then I wouldn't spend it recklessly on a silly Internet game. But because 6p is not a big deal to me, I'm prepared to take an easy-come, easy-go approach to it. Reckless, I know, but hey, some of us live on the edge.

[+Bobbinz]

The external API still works fine (if not slightly faster) so try downloading your caches from within GSAK 8

[+Happy Humphrey]

Managed to get the cache listing up and the page for logging the find (after some delay). Keyed in quite a lengthy log and submitted it - "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage", log lost.

[+The Blorenges]

It's probably all my fault...

 

I just typed up the details for a new action challenge, added a photograph, and published it successfully.

 

Direct all your angst this way - I can take it.

 

MrsB

[+Rich1010]

Someone feed the hamsters

 

Struggling to do anything on geocache.com since the site maintenance

[+Amberel]

Today, the site services are not very accessible, for the first time in the last 18 months ...

I think the main reason why people are annoyed at the slow down (actually closer to a shut down) is that it was entirely predictable and avoidable.

 

Rgds, Andy

[+cryosi]

its like the good ole days with dial up yet slower lol

taken me 10mins to log on and cant do a thing.

Edited August 21, 2011 by cryosi

[+sTeamTraen]

Today, the site services are not very accessible, for the first time in the last 18 months ...

I think the main reason why people are annoyed at the slow down (actually closer to a shut down) is that it was entirely predictable and avoidable.

So, you've been inside the machine room and determined that the slowdown is due to the recent software upgrade, and not, say, due to a CPU shutting down after a ventilator failure?

 

If so would you like to buy this horoscope?

[+Amberel]

So, you've been inside the machine room and determined that the slowdown is due to the recent software upgrade, and not, say, due to a CPU shutting down after a ventilator failure?

Have you verified that it IS due to a CPU shutting down? No, I thought you hadn't.

 

It is entirely predictable that if you greatly increase the load on something that was already creaking a bit at weekends, you risk pushing it over the edge.

 

Rgds, Andy

[+simplysup]

So, you've been inside the machine room and determined that the slowdown is due to the recent software upgrade, and not, say, due to a CPU shutting down after a ventilator failure?

 

If so would you like to buy this horoscope?

 

It does seem rather coincidental that this crushing slowdown followed the update, don't you think?

 

Nixay to the horoscope, but if you do lottery predictions..

[+Jonovich]

It's probably got less to do with the update, and more to the "International day of Geocaching" with lots of folks all trying very hard to get their logs in for a souvenir?

 

J

[+sTeamTraen]

It does seem rather coincidental that this crushing slowdown followed the update, don't you think?

If slowdowns or updates were extremely rare, then you might be starting to have a point. But there's a site update pretty much every month, and there's not usually an associated slowdown. (Back in 2009 there was a slowdown pretty much every Sunday.) So we have no grounds for imagining an obvious correlation between "site update" and "slowdown". Of course, this particular site update is much more vivid than previous recent ones, because it contains new features that people don't like. (So far, there seems to be a very high correlation between "I don't like Challenges" and "The update made the site slow". That doesn't make the link invalid, but it does suggest that some search for alternative explanations might not be entirely a waste of time for the neutral observer.)

 

It's entirely possible, for example, that some aspect of the site was close to a critical value last week, and that the publicity around World Geocaching Day has pushed it from 98% to 102%. It's not always easy to know that you're running at 98% (yes, it is for CPU usage, but there's a hundred other factors in a complex SQL/web setup for which can be hard to spot that the bath is about to overflow.)

[+Pharisee]

It seems to be working again now... but the avatars on the logs are conspicuous by their absence.

[+Chaotica_UK]

Yes suddenly its taken 20 minutes per page for me. Time to do something else. Shame it was my last log to do.

[+NattyBooshka]

Try hitting view all logs on a popular cache

[+Amberel]

... there's a site update pretty much every month, and there's not usually an associated slowdown.

Not an update of this magnitude, with so much extra load.

(So far, there seems to be a very high correlation between "I don't like Challenges" and "The update made the site slow". That doesn't make the link invalid, but it does suggest that some search for alternative explanations might not be entirely a waste of time for the neutral observer.)

Someone "neutral" like yourself, you mean .

 

Coincidences do happen. Cause and effect happens (a lot) more. It is likely, by some margin, that the extra load caused by the update was the most significant contributor to the slowdown.

 

And it is indeed back up again, with one of the contributors to the extra load removed - it seems more than possible that Groundspeak recognised it wasn't helping matters and have removed it until they can organise extra bandwidth.

 

Rgds, Andy

[+mcwomble]

It seems to be working again now... but the avatars on the logs are conspicuous by their absence.

 

Hopefully that will convince them to roll back that little feature of the upgrade too. One lives in hope

[+Gushoneybun]

And now it has died, getting Server is too busy screen now. I should have bought an Iphone and logged blank find logs from the field rather than trying to write something decent from home.

[+NattyBooshka]

I always avoid GC.com on weekends... Well, after 8am.

 

I log in early and get my PQs to run (7:30ish) which worked today.

 

I then use the app on the iPhone... Which has only once failed to deliver... Sadly it seems TPTB look after those who bought their search ability. So every weekend my phone works just fine... And often i know the puter will fail.

[+weston wanderer]

I have been trying for half an hour and have managed to log three caches. Just as well I can pop in and view this forum while I am waiting . In five years of caching this is the slowest I have seen gc.com run.

[+drdick&vick]

Have totally given up. Written the logs in GSAK and will try again tomorrow. If the slowness is being caused by extra demands on the server by people logging Challenges then I think GC needs to look at moving them and taking care of it's normal business and paying customers.

[+Jonovich]

Have totally given up. Written the logs in GSAK and will try again tomorrow. If the slowness is being caused by extra demands on the server by people logging Challenges then I think GC needs to look at moving them and taking care of it's normal business and paying customers.

 

I thought it's only paying customers that can create the challenges? If so, the balls already in the court of those that pay!

 

J

[+NattyBooshka]

I think it's a combination of challenges and worl geocaching day.... I haven't logged anything today, but pulled off several as quick as usual searches.

 

Sad to say, as I consider myself an old timer.

 

Our money is spent on smartphone users and challenges

Edited August 21, 2011 by NattyBooshka

[+drdick&vick]

seems to have improved and managed to log three caches.

posted on the GC facebook page but it has gone now.

[+Gushoneybun]

It does seem odd that I can run the GC.com app through my Ipod and the app works at full speed then try on the website and that grinds to a halt. Maybe is Groundspeaks aim to just focus on those with smartphones who do not even have to write a log, but thats a whole other thread (or 50.) It does seem that the cachers who use GPSr's are being given the second rate service.

[+Jonovich]

It does seem odd that I can run the GC.com app through my Ipod and the app works at full speed then try on the website and that grinds to a halt. Maybe is Groundspeaks aim to just focus on those with smartphones who do not even have to write a log, but thats a whole other thread (or 50.) It does seem that the cachers who use GPSr's are being given the second rate service.

 

GSAK 8 BETA using the API is lovely and fast

 

J

Edited August 21, 2011 by Dakar4x4

[ipplepen]

What an terrible customer experience. I have never ever experienced such a slow response from the GC servers as tonight. I can't help but feel sad at the unbridled growth of geocaching has resulted in not only are the good caches becoming hidden among the dross, but it is now also impossible to log any of your finds anyway!

 

We all deserve better!

 

Cheers Ground Speak - you have lost your way.